There’s nothing wrong with Plum Creek Timber Co. paying $1.7 million for expert analysis of its development plan for the Moosehead Lake region.

But allowing the giant land developer to give money to outside groups to provide favorable testimony during public hearings is unseemly and unfair.

The Portland Press Herald reported last week that Plum Creek paid $1.7 million to the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission to pay for the four-year review of its project.

The payment is not only legal, but also required by a 2005 law designed to spare taxpayers the cost of such analysis. Plum Creek was the first Maine developer to pay under the law, but several wind farms have been subject to the provision since.

This is just and reasonable, so long as the money goes to LURC, is allocated at its discretion and applied only to the cost of analyzing a development plan. Expert engineering and legal work is expensive, and developers like Plum Creek should build that into their projects.

We are disturbed, however, that the company gave about $100,000 to help public and private groups present testimony favorable to the project.

Piscataquis and Somerset county economic development organizations received money, as did the Maine State Chamber of Commerce. Money also went to the Maine Snowmobile Association, the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine and several other groups representing ATV riders, Maine guides and even bow hunters, according to the Press Herald Report.

The groups then used the money to hire lawyers to present their arguments.

“This gave Plum Creek and Plum Creek-funded organizations an inordinate amount of time to dominate the hearings and ask their questions,” Hillary Lister, a volunteer with the Native Forest Network, told the Press Herald.

Opponents, like Lister’s group, didn’t have access to cash and were forced to fund their expert analysis from their own budgets or from donations.

This is clearly unfair. Worse, there was no requirement for the developer to reveal these donations to LURC or the public.

This raises the possibility that a developer with deep enough pockets could basically “buy” favorable testimony for its project.

The next Legislature should close this loophole to ensure other LURC proceedings are fair and transparent.